Thursday, August 21, 2008

Why I bought a house

On August 12, 2008, one day after our sixth wedding anniversary, Joy and I bought our first house. Technically, it's a condominium, but architecturally, I'd call it a townhouse. I've linked to Zillow.com, which shows our sales price of $379,045. That works out to $276.47 a square foot.

I mentioned the price per square foot, but we most certainly did not buy our house as an investment. Rather we bought our house to be a place to live. We'd been living in a run-down 2 bedroom 900 sq/ft rental house in Pasadena since we got married. Since then, we've:

  1. Added a son to the family.
  2. Become active in a church in Burbank.
  3. Added a second job in Glendale (Joy's job).
  4. Become Costco members. (The nearest location is in Burbank.)
Those changes prompted us to look for a three bedroom house in Burbank. So we didn't buy with the idea of making a profit.

Now that doesn't mean we aren't hoping to come out ahead on the purchase. Rather we bought what we could afford when it made sense and we'll probably sell when it makes sense.